Chmouel Boudjnah wrote:
>
> Greg Sarsons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Why does the reporting of processes seem to change?
> >
> > For example, when I reboot and start setiathome it uses idle cycles.
> > kpm or top show this as I would expect. kpm showes 99% (niced) and top
> > showes 94%. gkrellm does not show it unless I tell it to display
> > programs which are niced. This correct. kapm-idled is showing 0.00 at
> > this time.
> >
> > Now after using the computer for a while or doing something what is
> > displayed changes. I end up with seeing on the cpu meter of gkrellm my
> > cpu use sitting at 60ish% without displaying processes that are niced.
> > top has now got setiathome around 40ish%. kapm-idle looks like it is
> > using the 60% which all the tools are reporting.
> > What could cause this?
>
> --=-=-=
> http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s14-1:
>
> 1.Why is kapmd using so much CPU time?
> (REG) Don't worry, it's not stealing valuable CPU time from
> other processes. It's just consuming idle cycles (normally
> charged to the idle task, which is displayed differently in
> top). Normally, when your system is idle, the system idle
> task is run, and this is shown as idle time (i.e. the "unused"
> CPU time is not charged to a specific process). With APM
> (Advanced Power Management), a special idle task (kapmd) is
> required so that greater power saving techniques can be
> enabled. So now, the "unused" CPU time is charged to the kapmd
> task instead.
>
> --=-=-=
>
> --=-=-=
> http://olstrans.sourceforge.net/release/OLS2000-apm/OLS2000-apm.html:
>
> In 2.2 and before, we basically had a hook into the idle loop, so that
> if we had APM enabled, we would just tell the BIOS that we're
> idle. In 2.3, Linus thought it would be a good idea if we had a
> separate power management idle loop, so (he) we invented the
> kernel APM daemon and I started getting bug reports about this
> process that was using all our time, called kapmd. And if you sat
> there just running top on a 2.3 kernel, the top process, if you're
> not doing anything else, will be kapmd and it will be using like
> 85% or 90% or 95% of your CPU time. These people were worried
> because it was idle: why is it using all of the time? Well
> actually, it's just that the time is getting accounted to that
> process. It's not doing anything, it's the idle loop. [26m, 12s]
> --=-=-=
>
> --
> MandrakeSoft Inc http://www.chmouel.org
> --Chmouel
Okay ... I knew about some of this but it wasn't clear. Tks for
clearing part of it up.
But how does that explain the behavior after Nautilus is run?
If I boot up and start setiathome and don't run Nautilus I have
setiathome at 99% (niced).
Now if I start Nautilus once this changes what is reported and now
setiathome is 38% nice. The user processes are now reporting 40% to 50%
and system at about 10%.
So am I not really having the user processes use up 40% ++ ? Will
setiahome still be doing the number of calculations as when it showed
99% niced even though it is now showing 38% niced?
I just don't see the reason why all of this would change after starting
the Nautilus file manager and then closing it.
Greg
